©ESR 2026

I had an email recently that caused more friction than it should have.

From my perspective, it was simple. Clear. Direct. It outlined what was happening, what needed to be addressed, and how we could move forward. No emotion. No subtext. No hidden meaning.

Just information.

But that’s not how it was received.

Somewhere between what I wrote and what was read, tone was added that I never intended. Assumptions were layered in. The message became something else entirely—something sharper, something more confrontational.

And suddenly I found myself in a familiar position: not explaining the problem, but explaining my intent.

This isn’t a one-time experience for me.

It’s a pattern.

I communicate in straight lines. I say what I mean, and I mean what I say. My focus is usually on clarity, prevention, and solutions. I’m not trying to navigate politics or manage optics. I’m trying to make sure things work.

But in many corporate environments, communication doesn’t operate that way.

There’s an expectation of softening, of reading between the lines, of layering meaning underneath the words themselves. Tone becomes a language of its own, and if you’re not speaking it fluently, your message can be misinterpreted before it’s even understood.

That’s where I tend to run into friction.

Because I don’t naturally communicate in subtext.

And I don’t naturally read it either.

To try and bridge that gap, I’ve added a small line to my email signature—a neurodivergent communication disclosure. It’s not there to excuse anything. It’s there to clarify something.

If my emails seem direct, it’s because they are. Not because they’re meant to be harsh.

There’s no hidden tone. There’s no passive aggression. There’s no second meaning waiting to be decoded.

What you see is what I mean.

And yet, even with that in place, I still find myself navigating situations where clarity is mistaken for conflict.

Where being focused is interpreted as intensity.

Where being direct is labeled as difficult.

What’s frustrating isn’t disagreement. I welcome disagreement. That’s how problems get solved.

What’s frustrating is being misunderstood before the conversation even begins.

I’ve realized that a lot of this comes down to assumption.

People assume that others think the way they do, communicate the way they do, and interpret language the way they do. So when something doesn’t fit that pattern, it’s not just seen as different—it’s often seen as wrong.

But different communication styles aren’t inherently problems.

They only become problems when we expect uniformity.

For me, clarity isn’t about confrontation. It’s about efficiency. It’s about preventing issues before they grow. It’s about respecting everyone’s time enough to say what needs to be said without wrapping it in layers that may or may not be understood the same way.

I’m not trying to be difficult.

I’m trying to be clear.

And I’m learning that those two things are not always received as the same.

But they are not the same.

Clarity isn’t conflict.

It just sounds different to people who are used to reading between the lines.

There’s also a level of pragmatic disappointment that comes with realizing I needed to add that line at all.

In theory, corporate environments are meant to function as communities—groups of people bringing different strengths, perspectives, and ways of thinking together to serve a larger purpose. At their best, they should welcome those differences, not flatten them.

But that isn’t always the reality.

Instead, there’s often a second layer of communication that exists above the actual work—a kind of metagame of optics, tone management, and interpretation. It’s not about what is being said. It’s about how it might be perceived, how it might be received, and how it might be reframed.

And that’s the part I struggle with.

Not because I can’t learn it—but because I don’t see the value in prioritizing it over clarity, solutions, and results.

It becomes exhausting to watch straightforward truth get reshaped into something else entirely, filtered through assumptions and expectations that were never part of the original message. Conversations shift away from solving the actual problem and toward managing how the problem is being discussed.

Over time, that kind of environment wears people down.

Especially the ones who care.

The ones who want to fix what’s broken, improve what’s not working, and prevent issues before they escalate. The ones who show up with intention and effort, only to find themselves repeatedly misunderstood or redirected into conversations that were never about the work in the first place.

That’s where burnout begins.

Not from the work itself—but from the friction around it.

And eventually, a quieter question starts to form:

If clarity keeps being misread,

if effort keeps being redirected,

if solutions take a back seat to interpretation—

what exactly are we trying to accomplish?